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July 14, 2008
Five [Golden?] Rings for Beijing Hotels
In just a few weeks, tens of thousands of tourists, media, athletes and officials (“the world”) will descend on Beijing to experience the Games of the XXIXth Olympiad. This will be my sixth travel experience to an Olympic Games (the fourth for a work assignment), and though there have been a different pre-Games reports leading to China’s first hosting duties, some of the travel buildup to this Olympiad seems to closely parallel all the other Games in my repertoire.
About a year out, media seem to report extensively on “no available rooms” and “the Olympic City is oversold” or a general sense that it will be tough to find housing in the host city (from my perspective, this is usually more true of Winter Olympic host cities as they tend to be smaller markets with fewer hotels – though Torino and Salt Lake were larger than Nagano and Lillehammer).
Then, 2-3 months out, this tends to shift to “very few hotels available” and then “deals still available” but a general sense of panic seems to prevail in coverage. It’s been a little bit different for Beijing, with reports about the challenges for visitors to get travel documents to China, and its effects on the hotel industry in Beijing reported by the Associated Press. Athens was an exception since post 9/11 security was a widely reported pre-Games issue – here in the U.S., it seemed to me like reports were a frenzied attempt to dissuade travel to Greece.
I predict that during Beijing’s Games, like every Games I’ve experienced, outlets will eventually report on “surprisingly wide availability of rooms” during the Olympic festivities – this is normal because some of the host organizers start to free up unused rooms dropped from sponsor room allocations. In fact, a friend tells of embarking last minute to Barcelona during the ’92 Games – during the good old days before online bookings were possible – and he found very nice accommodations on Las Ramblas with ease (thanks to a sponsor delegation checking out for a few days to go sightseeing).
At least one recent host city, Sydney, appears to have benefited from an audit of hotel occupancy both pre- and during-Games. No matter what happens in China, it will be interesting to see how the hospitality industry there rates the Games experience compared to other past host cities. And here’s hoping The Windy City’s vast selection of hotels will help Chicago secure the 2016 Games!
-- Nicholas Wolaver, Edelman Atlanta (posted via Tiffany Fessler's log-in)
Posted by tiffany.fessler at July 14, 2008 8:53 AM